


Try Not To Laugh

by cissues



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Coming Out, Early twenties reddie, Fluff, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Richie is still a broke comedian performing at open mics, They have crushes on each other, eddie is a bartender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21566497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cissues/pseuds/cissues
Summary: Richie is a trying to make it as a stand up comedian at his local comedy open mic, but he keeps getting distracted by the hot bartender.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 16
Kudos: 284





	Try Not To Laugh

**Author's Note:**

> This was a silly lil idea I got earlier today and got possessed briefly and then this happened. It's pretty directionless and goofy but it was fun to write and hopefully it's fun to read!!!
> 
> Follow me on twitter @peachieweech <3

Richie’s hands are shaking so badly that the liquid in his glass spills over onto his fingers, splashing on the already sticky bar top. He hisses a small curse, wiping his hand against his ripped and dirty jeans and using his forearm to spread the whiskey around the surface of the counter. The bartender - a man who Richie had resolutely not been looking at it in order to preserve what little self control he still had - raises an eyebrow at Richie before silently dropping a small stack of napkins in front of him.

“Thanks,” Richie croaks out and winces at how wrecked his voice sounds. The combination of nerves vibrating through his vocal chords and the embarrassing number of times his voice cracked on stage has reduced his speech to rasps. The bartender snorts, glancing around at the other patrons sitting at the bar - of which there were only two and they seemed more preoccupied with sucking one another’s faces than ordering another drink - before folding his arms against the counter and leveling Richie with a  _ Look _ .

“You did good tonight.” The bartender says and Richie isn’t making eye contact because this is the same bartender that’s here every Tuesday night comedy open mic and he’s the same bartender that makes Richie’s palms sweat and face heat and every time he can hear that loud, rambunctious laugh, he stumbles embarrassingly on his own jokes.

Richie rolls his eyes, taking a deep breath in through his nose and out, slowly, through his mouth. “Thanks,” he says again, although this time sarcastically. The bartender raps his knuckles against the wood right where Richie’s gaze is trained and points at him, index finger nearly touching the bridge of Richie’s glasses. Richie looks up, surprised.

“You  _ did good _ , Tozier. There were maybe like five fucking people here but they were all laughing their asses off, trust me.”

Richie swallows and takes in the pinch of the bartender’s eyebrows, the frown that enunciates his deep-cut dimples, the dark circles under his huge, deep brown eyes. Richie’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, trying to focus on keeping his heart from dropping straight out of his chest. The bartender, who’s name is ‘the bartender’ in all of Richie’s inner monologues and fantasies, has seen more of his stand-up than literally anyone else in his life. He is also, from Richie’s experience, brutally honest and will not hold back for the sake of politeness. He’d once told Richie that one of his jokes should have gotten him indicted for attempted manslaughter by way of secondhand embarrassment. He’d once told Richie that his stage presence was so abysmal that if it weren’t for the constant and shameless mouth breathing directly into the microphone then the bartender might have forgotten anyone was performing at all. He’d once told Richie that one of his jokes could be legally classified as a hate crime.

So Richie begins to trust him that maybe he hadn’t completely bombed tonight.

“Really?” Richie asked, looking away from the bartender so that he could push the word out of his mouth without being completely overwhelmed by those  _ eyes _ .

“Yeah, dipshit. You’ve… you’ve gotten better. If this place wasn’t career poison that repels talent scouts, I’d say you’re on your way to something.”

Richie snorts, taking a long sip of his drink just for something to do with his hands and mouth. He hears the bartender’s throat click and it makes him look up. The bartender’s face is pinched again, but it’s different than it was before. As soon as Richie looks up, the bartender turns away and Richie feels like he maybe caught a glimpse at something he shouldn’t have seen.

“Do you want another one?” The bartender asks, gesturing blindly towards Richie’s drink. Richie hums an affirmative and the bartender walks down the length of the bar hastily.

Richie frowns, looking behind him at the act currently going on onstage. The comedian is new, this only being his second or third Tuesday night at the open mic. No one’s paying particularly close attention and Richie looks back at the bartender, noticing that he, too, doesn’t seem to care to watch. Now that he thinks about it, he’s never seen the bartender pay any mind to any of the other acts. Once Richie’s set is over, he usually comes to the bar and he and the bartender banter until close, never once commenting on any of the other comedians that perform. Richie watches the bartender pour whiskey over ice and stand there for a moment, staring at it, before breathing in a deep breath and turning back to Richie. When their eyes meet, the bartender pauses, eyes widening and, to Richie’s amazement, cheeks flushing. He bows his head slightly as he hurries back from the other end of the bar, setting the glass down next to Richie’s empty one.

Taking the new drink in his hand, Richie feels a swell of confidence as he eyes the bartender’s sudden squirrely behavior.

“What’d you like about this new set, then, since it’s suddenly professional quality material?” Richie asks, allowing himself to smile for the first time since leaving the stage. The bartender rolls his eyes, crossing his arms tight over his chest. “I never said it was  _ professional quality material _ , it was just a slight improvement from the disgusting potty humor and fucking ‘I hate my girlfriend’ jokes you were doing before.”

Richie clicks his tongue, looking ponderously at his glass of whiskey.

“Is it ‘cause I said ‘boyfriend’ instead?” He asked, “because that set was literally the most stressful shit I’ve ever done due to that little fuckin’ nugget of information.”

The bartender’s face reddens noticeably and Richie’s heart does a little backflip. The bartender shrugs. “It was--” he frowns and starts again, “I haven’t heard that kind of material done well and I was so fucking nervous that you were gonna, like, make a punchline out of being gay, but you didn’t. It was… it was brave.” The bartender was frowning again, looking anywhere but Richie.

Richie feels his breath sort of quake as his breathes in and out, steadying himself. He opens his mouth to speak just as the bartender glances up at the clock on the wall and curses under his breath.

“Last call, guys!” He shouts suddenly and the moment has passed before it even started. Richie deflates slightly, lifting the glass to press the cold rim against his lips, trying to ease the vibrating under his skin. The bartender leaves to go fulfill last orders and Richie is alone again and his brain is going a mile a minute.

Besides the chance to perform, coming to the bar to talk to the bartender was the best part about his Tuesday evenings. They’d been going back and forth in amicable banter for months, ever since Richie started coming and the bartender would serve him comped drinks, insisting that all of the performers didn’t have to pay. He would sit there, putting his entire set under a scathing microscope, and laugh and try to make the bartender laugh and sometimes he would succeed and it would be better than any applause he ever received.

The bartender kept towards the other end of the bar, mostly, serving drinks and closing up tabs and wiping down the countertop. Richie just watched him smile shallowly at customers and resolutely avoid Richie’s gaze. The rest of the patrons began to filter out and suddenly, Richie realized, he was the only one left. The bartender was still standing as far away as he could get, scrubbing at some spot on the bar for several long minutes. Richie let himself be brave like the bartender thought he was and got up and walked over.

“Um,” he says, grabbing the bartender’s attention. He looks up from the countertop, surprised as if he hadn’t noticed that Richie was still there until just this moment. Richie smiles and feels like it was maybe a little weak. “So, would you wanna go on, like, a walk with me when you’re done?” He asks and it’s so embarrassingly desperate sounding that he physically winces. The bartender’s mouth falls open slightly and, again, his cheeks color and Richie wonders if that was always happening when they talked, or if something had shifted. The bartender doesn’t speak for a second, just looking at Richie, considering.

“Uh, y-yeah. I would--” then he pauses, eyes narrowing, “wait, don’t you have a boyfriend? You mentioned one in your set tonight...”

It was Richie’s turn to look shocked. His mouth moves wordlessly for a few moments before he lets out a guffaw of a laugh, grinning. “No? No! Of course not! I just fucking came out like three hours ago! Have you looked at me?” He gestures towards his ratty flannel, his too-long, too-greasy hair that never seems to take any style, his huge coke-bottle glasses that magnify his eyes in a very unflattering way. “What gay dude in their  _ right mind _ would try to tie this mess down?”

The bartender does, in fact, look at him. He does an  _ explicit _ body scan and begins to grin.

“You’d be surprised,” the bartender murmurs before sighing loudly, throwing the rag in his hand into the bar sink and weaving his way out from behind the bar. Richie realizes he’s never really seen the bartender’s lower half and has to physically swallow down a groan of appreciation when he notices slim hips and defined legs thanks to obscenely short jean shorts. Mid-thigh is not school  _ or _ Richie appropriate shorts-length.

“Alright, let’s go, Tozier.”

The two leave out of the back door, the bartender carrying a few trashbags and locking the door behind him. They walk past the dumpster and Richie makes a show of trying to spike one of the trashbags into it, the bartender shrieking at him to mind the edges. Alas, the bag catches on a sharp side and splits, spilling foul smell bar scraps all over the pavement.

“ _ Run! _ ” Richie yells, breathless and laughing as he grabs the bartender’s wrist and yanks him away from the scene of the crime. They cackle together, running from nothing through dark alleyways. Finally, they slow to a walk when they get to a well-lit street and it takes a few beats before Richie realizes that he still has the bartender’s wrist in his hand. Just as he moves to let go, the bartender opens his hand and laces their fingers together. Richie, slightly dumbstruck, looks up and sees that the bartender is smiling in this private sort of way, not making eye contact. Richie has literally never been attracted to someone as much as he is this man. This man, who’s name he doesn’t even know, he realizes with a jolt. ‘The Bartender’ is not this man’s name and he cannot recall a single moment where a name was ever brought into the equation. They’ve spent countless hours talking and bitching and ribbing, and yet, when Richie cannot, for the life of him, think of a single name that could possibly belong to this man.

The bartender glances over at him, lips parted slightly, as if he’s about to say some quiet confession into the cool night air and Richie  _ panics _ and blurts out,

  
“What’s your name? I’m so sorry, I just realized I don’t know what your actual fucking name is. I’m sure you’ve said it before but maybe I was, like, drunk or something but I can’t remember and I’ve just been calling you ‘the bartender’ in my head like we’re in some fucking  _ noir _ detective film or some shit--”

“It’s Eddie,” and  _ oh yeah _ he did introduce himself once. That one time. To someone else who was sitting next to Richie on a particularly bad night, when Richie was very near a black out. There was a man at the bar, laying it on thick, and the bartender had said “ _ uh, it’s Eddie, not  _ sweetheart _. _ ” and Richie had said, “ _ yeah, you fucking creep, the hot bartender is not a piece of meat, _ ” slurred speech and all.

“Eddie,” Richie says, smiling as he says it. Eddie smiles back, laughing to himself. “I really didn’t tell you, did I? God, I’m such a fucking disaster.” He rubs at his face with his free hand, shaking his head. “I always got too nervous, I think. It never seemed like the right time, after I was already giving you free drinks and like,  _ desperately _ flirting with you. That’s so goddamn pathetic.”

Richie’s brows furrow. “Wait, the bar didn’t comp the drinks?” and then his brain catches up to what Eddie just said, “wait, you were  _ flirting _ with me?”

Eddie cuffs him over the top of the head, rolling his eyes aggressively. “ _ No _ , the bar didn’t comp drinks to people who  _ sign up _ for a  _ free open mic night _ , Richard. I was  _ obviously _ flirting with you. I barely did my job that I get  _ paid for _ because I was too busy trying to get you to look at me. Maybe I’m not the only pathetic one,  _ Jesus _ , I didn’t think I was being subtle.”

Richie gesticulated wildly with the one hand that wasn’t  _ still _ holding onto Eddie’s. “You made fun of my act like  _ all the time _ , like really, really brutal shit. I seriously thought you hated me for a while, or thought I was an asshole--”

“I do think you’re an asshole, but I also think you’re funny. And hot.”

“ _ Hot _ ?! Now I’m  _ hot _ ?! I need you to understand that no one has ever, ever, in all of my twenty three years on this planet  _ ever _ referred to me as hot.”

Eddie snorts, shrugs with one shoulder, and says, “their loss, hottie.”

Richie seriously thinks his brain is going to short circuit.

“Didn’t you think I was straight until tonight? I mean, I only just came out publicly and I don’t think I was being, like,  _ super _ obvious about how big of a crush I have on you?”

Eddie blushes again, for maybe the one hundredth time tonight, and laughs. “Richie, you’ve called me cute more times than I can count. You  _ reek _ of closet case. You always got pouty when people would try to flirt with me and you tried to hold my hand that one time when you were super drunk. You grabbed my hand and stared me in the eyes and told me I was ‘ _ the most beautiful creature you’d ever seen _ ’. Then you puked on my floor.”

Richie winces, swinging their conjoined hands. He clears his throat and says, “well, at least I finally did it. Suck it, Drunk Richie.”

The laughter that rolls off of Eddie was made out of sunshine, and when Eddie reaches up to place a gentle, uneasy kiss on Richie’s cheek, he feels like he’s glowing. As they began to walk down the sidewalk, Eddie says “If he asks nicely, he absolutely can suck it,” in a way that feels more like a joke than a promise, but maybe it was both. Richie’s heart sings and he thinks that this is the lightest and the freest he’s ever felt, and maybe his coming out story wasn’t going to be the story of loss and tragedy that he thought it would be. He might even make it a bit for his next set, as long as Eddie was there, if only to embarrass him.


End file.
